Friday, 2 February 2018

John Calvin at Stake: the Role of the Genevan Reformer in the Burning of Michael Servetus, Part 1

Below is the first installment of a history paper which I
wrote last year, the 500th Anniversary of the official beginning of the
Protestant Reformation.

The occasion for
this paper was first suggested years ago in conversations with an Anabaptist
friend and good Christian brother who objected to Calvin and Calvinism for
three reasons: Calvin's doctrine of predestination, Calvin's acceptance of
infant baptism, and the fact that Calvin was entirely responsible (in my
friend's mind) for burning Michael Servetus at the stake simply because he
rejected infant baptism.Without
condoning or defending the burning of heretics, I knew that there was far more
involved in this incident than merely Servetus's view of baptism--Calvin wrote
and debated against other Anabaptist's in his day, after all, and did not call
for their deaths.Yet in the back of my
own mind, I always wanted to truly know how things fell out, what exactly
Servetus's heretical views were, and just what role Calvin played in Servetus's
trial and condemnation.

In my research, I was surprised to
discover that Michael Servetus is credited as possibly the first person to have
discovered/hypothesized the pulmonary circulation of the blood.This fact, combined with his death at the stake
in Geneva during Calvin's tenure there, means that the vast majority of
references to Servetus in the University of British Columbia's libraries are
not in the theology section but the medical libraries, and the articles and
books referring to him often spend a bit of time speaking of him as a heroic
martyr for the cause of experimental science who was persecuted for his liberal
and rational views in an era where the narrow minded and omnipotent church
tried to crush scientific innovation and rational learning.Thus, Calvin gets tarred and feathered by
these medical articles for a tyrannical, vindictive despot who was against free
thinking, against science and the enemy of anyone who opposed his dogmatic,
medieval views.Not a few of these
articles insinuate that not much has changed with the church's perspective on
science since then.The truth, as usual,
is far more interesting and complicated and reminds one that such scientists
should stick to science and not make sweeping historical or theological
judgments about matters they have not taken the time to understand.It was not the intellectual heirs of Calvin,
after all, who sent countless thousands to the guillotine two centuries later,
but the secularists and rationalists who rejected both Reformed and Roman
Catholic Christianity for Enlightenment principles.It seems that Enlightenment secularists were
just as willing to execute heretics as any era of Christianity ever had been,
perhaps more so.And Servetus was not
the rational debunker of religion that these writers imagine him to be--he not
only held to many Gnostic formulations of doctrines of the godhead and the two
natures of Christ (spending far more time studying and writing about Scripture
than he ever did about medicine or science), he actually believed he was
Michael the archangel, incarnated in the last times, to help the Lamb fight the
dragon and the beast in the apocalyptic end of the world.

In the paper
below, I do not attempt to clear Calvin of the responsibility he bears in the
Servetus affair, but I do attempt to put things in their historical context
rather than simply reading our current notions of tolerance back into an age
where they had yet to take hold.The
paper below is in no way comprehensive but represents a summary of my findings.As stated, below is part 1 of my
paper.

Michael Servetus (c.1511-1553)
was burnt at the stake for heresy in Geneva on October 27, 1553.John
Calvin (1509-1564) was lead pastor in this Protestant city and played a central
role in “the Servetus affair."[1]As one scholar puts it, “Servetus was burned,
but the smell of smoke has clung to Calvin’s clothes for centuries.”[2]

Many people’s impression of Calvin is accurately
voiced by Voltaire, who viewed Calvin as “the pope of the protestant party,” holding
“absolute power over consciences,” with the “spirit of a tyrant.”[3]Voltaire’s “contempt” for Calvin stemmed from his
holding Calvin responsible for Servetus’s execution.[4] But was Calvin really the all-powerful and
vindictive dictator of Geneva, solely responsible for the condemnation and death
of Servetus, a man whose only fault was to disagree with Calvin’s theology?[5]To answer this question, it is necessary
first to look briefly at how their lives intersected.

Though never having met prior to the
Geneva trial, Servetus and Calvin knew of each other for at least twenty years.Servetus, an amateur Biblical scholar and
theologian, and a professional editor and physician – also generally believed
to be the first person to theorize about the pulmonary circulation of the blood[6] – studied medicine in
Paris, possibly at the same time that Calvin was studying law and theology
there.Much later, there developed “bad
blood” between them, in part from Servetus’s request in 1534 that Calvin meet
him in Paris.Calvin traveled there “at
considerable personal risk,” being condemned in France for his Protestant views,[7] but “Servetus did not keep
the appointment….”[8] Servetus wrote thirty letters to Calvin over
the years.“Servetus adopted a condescending
tone…to instruct John Calvin...Calvin replied courteously and at length” but
Servetus was not satisfied, and “urged him to read carefully...” excerpts of
his book, The Restoration of Christianity.
Calvin read and “replied again at length,”
telling Servetus his own views were in his Institutes.
Calvin enclosed a copy which Servetus “annotated…with
insulting comments and returned.”[9]

By 1546, Calvin was through wasting his
time with Servetus: “…he has written to
me in so proud a spirit...you will lose time in asking me to bestow labour upon
him, for I have other affairs which press upon me more closely....”[10]Calvin told friend and fellow reformer, Guillaume
Farel (1489-1565):

Servetus
lately wrote to me, and coupled with his letter a long volume of his delirious
fancies, with the Thrasonic boast, that I should see something astonishing and
unheard of.He takes it upon him to come
hither, if it be agreeable to me.But I
am unwilling to pledge my word for his safety, for if he shall come, I shall
never permit him to depart alive, provided my authority be of any avail.[11]

Some see in this foreboding
remark Calvin’s intention to destroy Servetus,[12] but Calvin's letter proves
that, though he knew it was Servetus he corresponded with, he did not betray his
confidence and expose him.[13] Years later, however, Calvin would be
involved in Servetus’s exposure and arrest in France.

Scholars debate Calvin’s role in
Servetus’s trial and conviction of heresy by the Inquisition in Lyons in early
1553.Servetus’s alias, whereabouts, and
the fact that he had authoredThe
Restitution of Christianity, were exposed in an exchange of
letters between a Catholic from Vienne and his Protestant cousin, Guillaume de
Trie, a Genevan friend of Calvin’s.[14] Ultimately, at the request of French
authorities, de Trie forwarded documents from Calvin, securing Servetus’s
conviction.For some, this proves that
Calvin was orchestrating Servetus’s destruction.[15]However, Calvin only reluctantly supplied the
information at the pleading request of de Trie, thereby allowing de Trie to
keep his word to his cousin in Vienne.Calvin did not believe assisting the papal sword to be the proper way to
fight heresy.[16] Servetus avoided execution by escaping.The Catholics burned him in effigy.

Long before this, Calvin judged Servetus
to be a particularly dangerous heretic, spending no small effort attempting
both to refute him and warn others of him.Servetus attacked foundational doctrines of the Christian faith such as the
Trinity and Christ’s deity.Comparing
Servetus to Arius, Sabellius and “other ancient authors of errors,” Calvin
says:

Because
in our own day there have arisen certain frenzied persons, such as Servetus…who
have entangled everything with new deceptions, it is of importance to discuss
their fallacies…For Servetus the name "Trinity" was so utterly
hateful and detestable that he commonly labeled all those whom he called
Trinitarians as atheists....[17]

Regarding Christ’s two
natures and status as the eternal Son of God, Calvin outlines the errors of Nestorius
and Eutyches, then continues, “…in our own age too, a no less deadly monster has emerged, Michael Servetus….”[18]

For Calvin, Servetus's “detestable
impiety” went against both the plain teaching of Scripture and “the orthodox
doctors of the church.”[19]Servetus’s attempts to position Tertullian
over-against Nicene orthodoxy were rebutted by Calvin: “Even if [Tertullian] is
sometimes rough and thorny in his mode of speech, yet he not ambiguously hands
on the sum of doctrine that we defend.”[20] Just one example (from Servetus’s discussion
on Christ’s nature) shows not only the content but also the spirit which upset
Calvin:

…if
the second Person assumes Mary as it assumed CHRIST,
then the Sophists admit that Mary is CHRIST,
CHRIST
bore the Son of God, CHRIST is his own mother, CHRIST
is man and woman (pray restrain your laughter if you can)….Basil the Great…maintains
with singular mistakenness that he is called begotten, and not a created being;
a Son, and not born…whether the third Person proceeds from the Father and the
Son, or from the Father only, as the Greeks say, is a very bitterly debated,
vain, and ancient problem, which I shall later solve with ease.[21]

Calvin was not alone in recognizing Servetus’s
heresy.This opinion was shared by Johannes
Oecolampadius (1519-1605), who hosted Servetus for ten months in Basel[22] and attempted to correct Servetus’s
errors.[23]Even the “gentle and conciliatory” Martin Bucer
(1491-1551), who “abstained from persecuting the Anabaptists in Strassburg” and
had known “Servetus personally, and treated him…with kindness,” called
Servetus's work, On the Errors of the
Trinity, a “most pestilential book.”[24] Theodore Beza
(1519-1605), Calvin’s successor in Geneva, opines in retrospect:

I…say
of Servetus, what the ancient Fathers…wrote concerning the twin monster, Paul
Samosatenus and Arius…that with them originated those fires by which the whole
churches of Christendom were afterwards in a blaze.For punishment was most deservedly inflicted
on Servetus at Geneva, not because he was
a sectary, but a monstrous compound of mere impiety and horrid blasphemy,
with which he had for the period of thirty years, by word and writing polluted
both heaven and earth.Even now it is
impossible to say how much the influence of Satan has been increased….[25]

Calvin’s refutation of Servetus was not
about winning theological arguments, but about protecting the flock.Beza notes that Servetus was not merely a
sectarian endangering his own soul with heterodox personal beliefs.He was the worst kind of heretic: the publishing kind.Calvin believed it “useful to refute
Servetus’s grosser deceptions, with which he has bewitched himself and certain
others,” hoping that “godly readers” would recognize that “the crafty evasions
of this foul dog utterly extinguished the hope of salvation.”[26]Calvin saw himself as God’s watchdog over the
flock and Servetus a heretical wolf.[27]

[10] John Calvin,
Letters of John Calvin: Selected from the Bonnet Edition with an
introductory biographical sketch (Carlisle:
Banner of Truth, 1980), 79–80; in a Feb. 13, 1546, letter to Jean
Frellon, the Huguenot publisher that Servetus had edited some books for, and who
functioned as mediator through whom they corresponded usingpseudonyms; See
Bainton, Hunted, 97.

[11]Ibid., 82; in a letter of the same
day as above.

[12] Lawrence Goldstone
and Nancy Bazelon Goldstone, Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a
Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World (New York: Broadway, 2002), 155–57.

[17] John Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion: In Two Volumes (Louisville: Westminster John Knox,
1960), 147.Servetus
appears to be the first to apply the term “Trinitarians” to those holding
orthodoxy views on the Trinity.

[21] Michael Serveto,
The Two Treatises of Servetus on the
Trinity:On the Errors of the Trinity
(7 Books, 1531) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 64–65;
Sophists being those who defend Nicene Trinitarianism and Christ's full eternal
deity, naming also "the great theologian Nazianzen" and Augustine as
others who were mistaken on these points.

[22]Spijker,
Brief Guide, 94; in his own home, getting to know his views well.